


Porcelain

by Anonymous



Series: Dear [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abuse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 18:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11629026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Marius forgets an appointment.





	Porcelain

His grandfather is raging again.

It’s loud shouts and threats, barely contained anger and maybe — Marius dares to think — a bit of regret.

Marius sits in the salon and watches him. He is tired and hungry, having just come home from a meeting at the Musain when his grandfather has descended upon him, the reminder of a forgotten appointment clutched in his hand, red-faced, furious.

Marius thinks that it’s not so much the forgotten appointment that irks his grandfather but Marius’ inability to remember things like those. Marius still doesn’t understand what makes him so furious. In the end, it is Marius’ problem, not his.

His grandfather keeps shouting.

A long time ago, Marius would have cried. He would have cried along with his aunt and his grandfather as they sat with him on the bed and bandaged up his arm and locked away the blades, guiltily and blaming themselves for Marius’ mistakes.

The tears don’t come now.

They stopped coming a long time ago, and sometimes Marius fears that he is turning cold, turning apathetic towards them. And maybe he is, but he can’t bring himself to cry or to react any more than with stony indifference. The words are the same after all, have been for the past five years. He got used to them. Guilt flickers in the back of his mind like mist. It will take a while for it to cloud his thoughts and Marius relishes in the last moments of his apathy.

“I gave everything for you, and I ask so little of you. Don’t be ungrateful. Don’t you love me?” his grandfather asks — no — shouts.

_Of course I love you_ , Marius wants to say but he doesn’t trust himself to not break or shout, so he bites his tongue and looks at his grandfather with the same stony expression he carried since the moment this situation started.

For his grandfather words are useless. He measures love in action but those are not about Marius taking care of himself. It’s about his grandfather seeking prestige and validation for having raised a good child. A normal child: hard-working, pious, obedient, devoted.

It’s about saving face with the other families who have successful children.

Marius is not successful. He still lives at home and his grades are barely enough to pass. Going out drains him and recharging takes hours. Sometimes, it the rest of the day. It’s precious hours he wastes away in bed, willing his brain to quiet down enough for the fog to disappear but it does not. His grandfather doesn’t need to know but Marius wishes that he would somehow understand.

But he doesn’t. Or doesn’t really try to. It doesn’t matter either way. His grandfather only sees ‘what’ and not 'why’. That’s all that counts. Marius understands and he tries to stop but he can’t.

His grandfather is still shouting.

His voice has turned shrill and painful to listen to. The cane taps an irregular rhythm onto the granite floor, disrupting the steady tick and tock of the old wooden clock in the room.

Marius follows the cane, registers every tap, every scrape, every swing through the air and counts the seconds in between. There is a pattern somewhere in them, maybe even a forewarning if he listens closely enough; he is sure that if he tried he could —

Porcelain shatters next to his feet. It misses him by fifteen centimetres. The shards burst in all directions and cold tea drenches his socks, making them stick uncomfortably to his skin and Marius wonders idly, how far he can run with bare feet.

“I raised you and I cared for you, I did everything in my power to keep you safe, I dedicated my life to you!”

Marius knows that.

His grandfather sometimes buys him expensive gifts. In exchange, he has to behave. It has worked when he has been a child. But now it doesn’t.

He has learned that every gift comes with a storm. As he grows older and starts to understand his Grandfather’s thoughts, he’d rather avoid the storms than take the gifts.

Marius has a collection of them stored away, unopened, unused. They are gathering dust in the back of his wardrobe because there’s is a part of him that doesn’t want to behave, doesn’t want to obey and to be good and quiet, just to have his grandfather’s approval.

It has brought nothing but trouble. He wishes to eliminate that side.

“I should have let you rot away with your father! He who took your mother from this household! A liar! A brat! I should have killed you when I had the chance!”

The words sit wrong with him. It is not the death threat, even though the part of him that pushes for survival worriedly files it away for later examination. It is the mention of his father that irritates him so much. Marius has no explanation for it and for the first time since this started, his apathy makes way for softly boiling anger.

And it boils over.

“Then kill me,” Marius says. He's not shouting, not breaking. It's blank, indifferent.

Talking back has been a mistake.

Time passes in a flurry. It’s a mingle of loud voices and splintered wood and shattered porcelain. There’s tea on his skin, both scalding hot and chillingly cold.

_Well,_ Marius thinks, _I deserved that._

He can’t remember when or how he has gotten down here, but he rests his head against the wall behind him where he is kneeling on the floor. Shards of broken porcelain bury through his trousers and his socks and his shirt is drenched with tea.

An icy calm settles in the salon.

There’s a patch of chipped blue paint on the wall and Marius tries to focus on it as much as possible, tries to ground himself tries to remember how it has gotten there but he cannot grasp more than a hazy garble of noise and colour.

Marius hears heavy breathing. His own? Maybe. His Grandfather’s definitely.

Steps reverberate through the wall where he has rested his head on, loud at first, then growing distant.

Voices distance themselves from him, and when the door falls shut, the silence rings loudly in his ears.

After the lights turn off in the corridor, Marius picks himself off of the floor and leaves for the Corinthe.


End file.
